Completely and Totally Blessed

Last week, I finally made peace with the idea that Ella may be in a wheelchair for the foreseeable future. That’s huge for me. I’ve spent the past two months researching tests, treatments, specialists, and anything else I could think to investigate. Most nights I would be up until 2 am just reading. To say I was desperate to fix her would not be overstating it.

While I’m still aggressively looking for answers and help, I’ve also begun looking for ways to help her life be as functional as I can. I said that to a friend and her whole face lit up. She’d been waiting for me to get to a place of acceptance, because she had an idea of how to help but needed me to be there.

The wheelchair that we have rented for Ella is not awesome. It’s the kind they use in a hospital. It is awkward to maneuver, hard to load into the car, and really heavy. We started looking into how much a good or better chair would cost. Turns out that they’re easily $2,500 and up.

A call to our insurance company, to find out how much they would cover, wasn’t super helpful. I spoke to four different women who had answers ranging between $500 and “most of it.” That’s not really clear, and makes me wonder how badly the insurance rules are written if four different reps can read the literature and come up with four different answers.

My sweet friend said that was ridiculous and that Ella shouldn’t be waiting on the insurance company to come to a consensus, and she started an online fund raiser. We calculated how much it would cost for a better-ish chair and some basic equipment to make our house more handicap friendly and settled at $4,000. (We’re house hunting, but the chances of finding a perfect wheelchair accessible house are slim to none. We’re going to need a ramp for the front entrance no matter where we are.)

“People love you and your family,” she assured me. “They’re just waiting for a chance to help.”

It seems like she was right; because, by this morning the total was over $2,500.

I’ve been looking at the total creeping upwards all weekend and fighting back tears. I’m overwhelmed by the generosity of people who’d never even heard met us. It was humbling.

It still is.

Thank you to everyone who donated towards keeping our girl mobile and making it a little easier on my back. (That chair is awkward heavy.) I read all the time about how awful a place the world is these days, but I don’t see that. It’s looking pretty wonderful to me right now.

Thank you, and may God bless you all.

**Edited to add – I got asked how to get to donate to the fundraiser. Here’s the link